Do you support or oppose the Child Labor Farm Regulations proposal?

In addition to preventing children from being able to work family farms, the new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course. Do you support yet another regulation implementing government control instead of private sector?

breathe2travel, I have several questions about this news item, which I heard discussed this morning.

1. Why is the cut off 18 and not 16, which is a legal age to work in my state?2. What inspired this law? Did some farm family abuse the system? Did some family adopt foster kids and make them work? Was some young child injured, working around the farm?3. What consistency do programs like 4-H and FFA have in their safety training programs? Are these run by local folk, with varying results? Was it because of poor training that some child was injured while working on their family farm?

I guess that begins my thought process on all of this. My mother grew up working her dad's wheat, and picking Grampa's potatoes. I am not opposed to children working their family's farms, in general.

I figure hard work is not the issue. I suspect someone abused the system or sped up the safety requirements in order to inspire such a law.

It doesn't matter WHY the law is being considered. If you think that children under 18 should be allowed to work their own family's farm, then this law would make that illegal. It should be considered wrong.

I disagree, swordsbane. It absolutely matters. I might think it is a great idea to have kids working on my family farm, but this may be a very shortsighted view. It isn't all about me after all, there is a greater good.

I have no problem with children working as a general rule. There is nothing wrong with children learning the value of hard work. The problem has always been HOW they are put to work and under what circumstances. That should be the focus of child labor laws, not IF children should be allowed to work, but what sort of work environment. All things being equal I am against any law that would make children working illegal. Minimum wage is bad enough. Most people don't know how many viable jobs were lost because companies weren't able to pay below the minimum wage for those jobs.

I think the new regulations are ridiculous. Farm families have been the backbone of America for generations. I worked at 16 in a department store, so how is that different? I think the 4-F and FFA are wonderful organizations and should not be tampered with either. The government is trying to take over too many areas of our lives and they have over stepped their bounds in this case.

This is hard to imagine, since my grandfather started full-time farm work at age 8 and all his children worked about as soon as they could walk. Running machinery is too dangerous for some of the younger kids, but this law seems extreme.

If the kids cannot work, then farm families will need to hire more help, so is this part of the rationale for the law - to create more jobs?

On the surface, these regulations seem to create a business environment more favorable to large corporate farms than to individually (family) owned farms. Of course, I would have to study the situation closer and find out which lobbyist was involved - if any. Lobbyists can get involved in regulations, right?

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